Background
Kirk Boott was born on October 20, 1790, in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, the son of Kirk Boott, an English merchant, originally of Derbyshire, who settled at Boston after the American Revolution, and of Mary (Love) Boott.
Kirk Boott was born on October 20, 1790, in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, the son of Kirk Boott, an English merchant, originally of Derbyshire, who settled at Boston after the American Revolution, and of Mary (Love) Boott.
Kirk Boott studied at Rugby Academy, England, whence he entered Harvard College in the class of 1809.
Being militarily inclined, Boott was sent to England where a commission had been procured for him. He served in the Peninsular War under Wellington, commanding a detachment at the siege of San Sebastian. His regiment was ordered in 1813 to New Orleans, but Boott, unwilling to join an expedition against his native land, secured a detail to a military academy for more instruction. In 1817 Boott's father died, and soon after this the son, who had been dependent on a subaltern's meager salary, entered his father's firm in Boston expecting a good living from it. In this he was disappointed. The business was in such shape that he found himself practically without employment. In 1821, while passing a day at Nahant with Patrick Tracy Jackson, he applied for a position as manager of an enterprise then projected by several Boston capitalists at East Chelmsford, afterward Lowell. When, later, negotiations for control of the holdings of the Proprietors of Locks and Canals on Merrimack River were completed, young Boott was engaged as agent of the newly incorporated Merrimack Manufacturing Company.
Boott did not originate the cotton manufacture, but after the enterprise was under way he became its dictator. He enlarged the Pawtucket Canal, which had been opened October 18, 1796, for conveying logs around Pawtucket Falls, and he dug a lateral canal to bring power to the Merrimack Company's first unit. Other canals followed, and on them other cotton factories. Boott inaugurated a machine-shop which, with Maj. George Washington Whistler as superintendent, began the making of locomotives in America. He brought to his mill village much of the best mechanical talent of his time. Brick boarding houses were built for the operatives, most of them young women from the nearby farms, and elaborate rules and regulations for their conduct were adopted. St. Anne's Church, Episcopal, was erected after the design of an English parish church, and all operatives were at first taxed for its support. Boott built for himself a mansion, - still standing in upper Merrimack St. , and used as a corporation hospital. In these and many other undertakings he proved himself an indefatigable worker. To the new place, when in 1826 it was about to be set off from Chelmsford as a separate township, Boott wished to give the name of Derby, after his English ancestral home, but he was overruled by his directors, who chose the name of Lowell in honor of Francis Cabot Lowell.
Boott's surname is still perpetuated in one of its chief manufacturing corporations; his Christian name in a downtown street. Boott carried more burdens than one man should. His nerves tense, Boott quarreled with his chosen director, Rev. Theodore Edson, D. D. , over a difference of opinion regarding the public school system. When the town meeting voted to sustain Dr. Edson and built two modern school houses, Kirk Boott withdrew from St. Anne's and for a time attended the Unitarian Church. Before his death, however, he returned to his pew in the Episcopal Church whose forms he loved. He died while driving his chaise in Merrimack St. , on April 11, 1837.
Boott was a member of the Episcopal Church.
Kirk Boott was a pioneer of industrial feudalism, a benevolent despot, a driver of men and women, an emotional, opinionated, and well-meaning man who was endowed with constructive imagination and ability to organize.
Kirk Boott married Ann Haden of Derby.